Well this is it, eh? June 3, the day of the last primaries. Obama has already won the delegate race for the nomination and we have finally reached the end of the road, right?

Very few people – including the Clinton Campaign – ever saw it going this far, but all things considered, it has been a very good primary season and when it comes down to the come down, Hillary may have actually helped Obama.

Thanks to her, he has already faced many of the bullshit character attacks, half-truths, whisper campaigns and the racism one would expect from a Republican candidate. Yet he has continued to gain popularity.

But while the campaign for the nomination has essentially been over since February, today has to be the end, right? After today she has no reason to keep going and will have to admit she lost, right?

But, nope, not Hillary. Even after Obama secures the nomination tonight, Hillary will refuse to let go, clinging tenaciously to the possibility that the party Gray Beards will overturn the will of party voters and give her the nomination despite that fact that she is unlikable and unable to draw people to her campaign:

Hillary’s been out of this thing for a while now, but they continue forth as if it is neck and neck and she’s got a shot at this thing. However, the complete disconnect may be explained by this photo published recently by the New York Times.

Ah, sweet bourbon.

It also explains recent statements by Harold Ickes at the DNC’s rules committee meeting this past weekend. During his rant on why all the votes from an unfair election – an election that broke the rules he helped write – should count now that his candidate’s campaign has stalled, Ickes said he didn’t believe the committee had the “gall and chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000 voters.”

Of course, for his candidate to win, he has to convince the superdelegates to do exactly that: use their judgement to subvert the will of party voters around the country and choose his candidate as the standard bearer for the establishment.

It would be great to be Ickes’ kids. Imagine, being able to break rules and change your story at will with no repercussions.

But Ickes also did a little foreshadowing on the next step in the Clinton’s campaign, saying – as supporters chanted “Denver! Denver!” like rowdy pledges at a frat party – the candidate reserved her right to take this to the credentials committee.

I am not sure what the credentials committee is or what they do, but this is their move: keep their flailing campaign alive by taking it from committee to committee, arguing every little point and continuing to kneecap the party candidate while raising the specter of assassination all for her own personal glory.

I recognize that you have secured an insurmountable lead in the pledged delegate count and continue to pull closer in super delegates, but frankly, it is ridiculous it has taken this much time to decide the Democratic Party nomination and even more ridiculous that the super delegates are still squabbling over the best candidate.

The people have spoken and even the pundits have started talking about what anyone with open eyes could see for months.

If the Democratic Party Establishment ignores their own rules and the major in-rush of new voters yearning for something new, something different, then fuck these idiots; Go it alone.

You can win a three-way race between these candidates. Encourage and support Democratic candidates in their races around the country (though there is nothing wrong with supporting a Republican worthy of support), but run on your own. The Red Dawn Generation will follow.

If the Establishment picks the Establishment Candidate, they are obviously no longer the party we need running things.

Go it alone.

Your supporters are fervent. Most of them have been waiting their whole lives to see a candidate who looks like them and understands their world view. For too long we have had to choose between our grandparents and our parents telling us what to do and I am fed up with it. It is time for someone who looks and thinks like us.

And it’s a testament to the good work of the Baby Boomers and the fact that their old ways of thinking are no longer necessary that a white guy from Upstate New York can say that about a black guy from Chicago.

Read this and tell me the same damn thing isn’t happening to the Democratic Party:

“I’m tempted to say it’s one huge joke,” Oleko said.

“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.

Over at the DNC, Obama needs 100 superdelegates to step forward and the nomination battle is over.

since the primaries will have lifted Obama over 1,900 delegates (elected and super), he’ll only need about 100 more, out of about 300 uncommitted superdelegates.

For the 21st time this primary season, the Democratic party candidates gathered for another “debate,” this time in Philadelphia and in advance of next week’s Pennsylvania primary, another in a long line of firewall states for Hillary Clinton.

As Charlie Gibson put it, it was round 15 of a scheduled 10 round bout.

And really, it wasn’t much of a debate, as everything has already been covered and on policy matters and goals, there is very little difference between the two remaining democrats.

Instead, much of the debate, if it can really be called that, consisted of the moderators, one of whom owes his career to a Clinton, asking questions of questionable importance about non-issues and bullshit. It’s no wonder Obama labeled it the “Gotcha Debate.”

Part of the problem, of course, was that neither moderator really seemed up to the task and each had trouble coming up with anything new to ask – though Stephanopoulos did find a new attack on Obama, something about an Obama supporter who used to be a member of the Weather Underground, a domestic “terror” organization (for lack of better term) that died off soon after the end of the Vietnam War.

Even Gibson, who is usually very good, stumbled, and right off the bat. The first question was about the possibility of a joint ticket and Gibson quoted the Constitution, which says that the second-place finisher in the presidential election would be vice-president.

“If it was good enough in colonial times, why not in these times?” he asked.

Never mind the fact that the Constitution was amended to change that in 1804 because they realized how silly that was soon after the two-party system developed or that this is a primary, not a general election…

Both candidates performed as expected, with Clinton taking shot after shot at her Democratic opponent and Obama trying to remain above it while repeating his message of trying to change the whole politics as usual thing.

So the debate really became one of style with Hillary having the opportunity to show off her Wonky side, very effectively answering direct policy questions (most of which she answered first, leaving Obama, who agrees with her on many of them, trying to agree with her while saying something different) and Obama showing his vision and attempt to move past the politics as usual.

So the big headline yesterday was “Clinton says Obama wants to stop votes” or something to that effect. According to the AP, Sen. Clinton in a series of interviews today told primary voters that Sen. Obama doesn’t want their votes to count:

“My take on it is a lot of Senator Obama‘s supporters want to end this race because they don’t want people to keep voting,” she told CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings, Mont. “That’s just the opposite of what I believe. We want people to vote. I want the people of Montana to vote, don’t you?”

Montana holds its primary June 3. The New York senator made similar comments in interviews with stations in Indiana and North Carolina, which hold primaries May 6.

“My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said at a news conference in a high school gymnasium here. “Her name is on the ballot. She is a fierce and formidable opponent, and she obviously believes she would make the best nominee and the best president.”

While it is true many of his supporters have recently reminded Hillary that math is certainly not in her favor and have recently urged her to stop her attacks on the likely Democratic candidate and give up her Quixotic Candidacy for the good of the party, Sen. Obama has not been one of them. Others have also urged the superdelegates to get real (despite threats from the Clinton mafia) and coalesce behind Obama since he will almost undoubtedly finish the primaries with more elected delegates.

Officially, however the campaign has not said such a thing and publicly supported Clinton’s right to continue running. Why should they? They have three times the money, all the momentum and he’s ahead by a comfortable enough margin that he was able to vacation in the Virgin Islands last week.

The AP story also offers this:

“I don’t even keep track of it, I can’t even tell you that figure,” Clinton said when asked by Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA how many superdelegates had endorsed her in recent weeks.

Which is total bullshit, as the next sentence points out:

As she spoke, her husband, former President Clinton, was in Oregon, lobbying uncommitted superdelegates.

But, just to recap, Clinton is not doing well in that race, even losing a longtime friend who owes his entire political career to the Clintons. In thast respect, James Carville’s metaphor was apt, Richardson’s endorsement of Obama really is a Judas-like move if you’re a Clinton disciple.

But really, i suppose some Democrats could say the same thing about a candidate who continues to not only campaign but attack – sometimes viciously – the party’s best hope in nearly a decade to reclaim the White House. (***UPDATE BELOW!***)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has reaffirmed her position that superdelegates should not “overturn the will of the voters” in the face of criticism from top donors to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

“The Speaker believes it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if superdelegates are perceived to overturn the will of the voters,” Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said in a statement late Wednesday.